Charles Marsh (1) (1958–)

Marsh focuses on the events and religious convictions that led each person into the political upheaval of 1964. He presents an unforgettable American social landscape, one that is by turns shameful and inspiring. In conclusion, Marsh suggests that it may be possible to sift among these narratives and lay the groundwork for a new thinking about racial reconciliation and the beloved community. He maintains that the person who embraces faith's life-affirming energies will leave behind a most powerful legacy of social activism and compassion.… (mehr)

An ideal biography; there's not much more to say. Marsh is very good on almost everything, from social history to theology. The picture of Bonhoeffer moving from reactionary German to anti-Nazi saint is beautiful. Why Metaxas's awful book sells so much better than this one is a mystery even greater than that the God of Karl Barth.

I'm joking, of course. That one sells better because it helps people feel better about themselves. This one points out that, to be worthy of feeling good about yourself, you actually have to try to be a better person.… (mehr)

While I suspect Bonhoeffer's martyrdom ensured that he could be recreated in the image of any theologian (etc) seeking corroboration of theologies wise or otherwise, he is nevertheless one of the great theological minds of the twentieth century. A work purporting to "reclaim" him must have caught my attention 21 years ago, so I forked out a considerable amount of money and bought it. At last I've read it.

I read it as a theologian (or sorts), bot as a philosopher. I wanted to know who/what Bonhoeffer was reclaimed from, and how he might be released yet again to speak to the church today. I am none the wiser, though that may be because I'm particularly dull rather than through any fault of Marsh. I find philosophical discourse fraught at the best of times, and the moment the perpendicular pronoun starts popping up willy-nilly through the clauses and sub-clauses of a sentence I lapse into catatonia. Bonhoeffer himself was necessarily a dense writer. Marsh is clearly a keen devotee of the Heidegger School of Communication.

Consequently a sentence such as

"Human identity conceived as self-identification approximates the anthropological postulate of humanity ruled by the will to self" [138]

is likely to have me reaching for my Prozac. Better still, when Bonhoeffer says something reasonably comprehensible like "Our relation to God is a new life in 'existence for others' through participation in the being of Jesus" is relatively comprehensible in a way that Marsh's explanation, "Bonhoeffer envisions a motion of the self toward the other and of the other toward the self that recreates both in agapeic fellowship" [also 138] is not. But this is a more or less accessible example. Or, perhaps, "'... the practical-political side of authentic Dasein consists ... in "the perlocutionary effect of a diffuse readiness to obey in relation to an auratic but indeterminate authority." Amen, I say.

A few pages later I discover a sentence to rival James Joyce's finest efforts: it's on page 142. But I'll spare you. When theologians interpret other theologians by making them less comprehensible I begin to despair. I found this a bitterly out of my depth book. Or maybe just disappointing. But either way I wish I'd saved seventy bucks all those years ago,… (mehr)